TerraTec Aureon 7.1

The Terratec Aureon 7.1 USB is an affordable external sound card which supports optical and digital output through S/PDIF with full 5.1/7.1 surround sound. To use this card, install ALSA (which has support for this sound card). To configure the card for usage, follow these steps:

3. Configure mplayer for surround sound (optional)

I recommend using XBMC for media playback, as most receivers do no support the AAC codec. XBMC will re-encode AAC to a common codec (AC3 probably) in realtime, so you can watch most surround sound media files. XBMC has a self-explanatory configuration system using a GUI.

Tips

To change volume using amixer and hotkeys, use the following command (for example): "amixer set 'Master' 5+"